Forum rules
ATTN:!! Only users pre-approved by TeMerc may offer help and assistance in malware removal. Any and all unauthorized posts will be removed without notice. Please read this thread for proper HijackThis! installation.

Hi Tom... I'm back after a blessedly long time without a problem... but I guess any smooth patch must at some point come to an end. You helped me a bunch before and I remembered you so here I am!

I thought I'd offer a brief description of what's happening so that you can, if relevant, point me toward a posting that already deals with my issue. I tried to search on the forum by keyword but couldn't find a posting to address it, but who knows, maybe I missed it.

So: I'm on a PC with XP. IE 8 (maybe part of the problem). McAfee Internet Security, active subcription. Other day I'm on IE and suddenly a fake "XP AntiVirus" pops up. Pretty hilarious how it looked. I knew I was infected right away.

Downloaded everything on a different computer, brought it to the infected one via flash drive. The steps seemed to work, the Anti-Virus pop-ups went away... until...

I rebooted my computer and now there's a red shield in my icons on the bottom right of my screen, acting like it's a "Window Security Alert". It starts as a balloon when I boot and then the balloon goes away and the shield stays around. It tells me automatic updates is off and I need to turn it on. That's not true; I checked via control panel. My auto-updates are on. It's a fake, I'm pretty sure, and I'm pretty sure I'm still infected with something. Please let me know how I should proceed.Thanks!